Amy Gableman is a Customer Experience (CX) advocate and UX designer at MSC Industrial Supply, one of the nation’s largest direct distributors of metalworking, maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) products. We sat down with Amy to discuss how measuring customer feedback using ForeSee has helped her get buy-in for CX strategies from others throughout the organization and improve the company’s website experience. [And, make sure to check out ForeSee’s interview with Amy in the video embedded below.]

Why is important for your company to measure the customer experience?

We actually have the word “measure” in our mission statement. The customer is one leg of that mission statement and one of the stakeholders in what we do.

It’s very important to us that they’re satisfied, not only with the company as a whole, but with the online experience. We like to do a lot of our business that way. We put a lot of time and thought into providing them with a satisfying experience. Hopefully it’s not just satisfying, but a little bit above that or more.

Why do you chose ForeSee to help you measure customer experience at MSC?

When we started shopping around for a CX measurement partner we were looking at a few. It was ForeSee’s methodology that sold it to the executive team. They had the model questions so we could have that metric. It wasn’t something that would be one-off here and there. We actually could have this number to trend. ForeSee is so helpful in coaching us, not only to just use that number, but to bring in the open-ended responses and add some color to the satisfaction score.

You wouldn’t run any other part of your business at MSC, such as finance or supply chain or sales, without reliable data to support those business decisions. Why is it important for you to measure customer experience with that kind of certainty?

We use the data that we get from ForeSee to make informed decisions about prioritizing projects so we’re not wasting our time. That’s what ForeSee has provided us with. We [can’t] just do things based on our opinion or what we think the customer wants. We don’t want to waste our resources on fly by night things that we think are going to make a better customer experience. We’re actually listening to them tell us what they want because we’re a B2B company. Our customers have a job to do, and they rely on us to provide them with the tools so that they can accomplish what they need to in a timely manner.

On a daily basis we make it a point to share the feedback we’re getting from customers. Everybody can see how they have a part in the customer experience. It’s not just the UX team or anything like that. Everybody can see that what they’re doing can help here.

Can you share a story about how ForeSee has helped your company?

Sure. ForeSee has helped us in many ways, but one thing in particular that stands out is how we saw a six point lift in customer satisfaction based on feedback we were getting from customers.

Customers were having problems locating the promo code on our website. We had a nice graphic on the homepage and we thought that was the way to go. But after reviewing the data from ForeSee, we realized if people don’t [begin their journey] on the homepage, they’re missing it completely. We built a program to put the promo code front and center. If customers were on a page that was showing product — whether search results or a product detail page — the promo code was front and center. We even built in functionality letting customers click that banner to automatically apply the code [instead of having] to copy and paste or memorize it. We made it very user-friendly. And like I said, we saw a six point lift in customer satisfaction among people who were using the promo codes.

That’s a tangible example of how, if you listen to your customers, your satisfaction score will definitely increase.

On socializing CX data…

This is not a tangible example, but it’s something that I think is important. In sharing the data we’re getting via ForeSee measurement, it makes everybody in the company — whether the product department, the web department, etc. — feel like they have a stake in the customer experience and what they can do to increase the customer satisfaction. It brings everyone together with a common goal. That is a great way to make moves and increase, not only everybody’s interest in customer satisfaction, but the actual score itself.

Again, you can’t measure that in the numbers, but everybody is interested.

About the Author

As a pioneer in customer experience analytics, ForeSee delivers superior technology and proven methodology to connect the customer experience to the bottom line. The result is better business for companies and a better experience for consumers.